John Ross

Glasgow, Inverness, London, Sydney

Asia Pacific Editor at Times Higher Education (THE)

Welcome to the official @Twitter feed for @Lucidmessages #PublicAffairs & #business #growth division based in #Scotland https://t.co/NRWVutyUmh

Featured in: Favicon

timeshighereducation.com Favicon

medium.com Favicon

huffpost.com Favicon

theguardian.com Favicon

harvard.edu Favicon

wsj.com

dailystar.co.uk Favicon

chinadaily.com.cn Favicon

smithsonianmag.com Favicon

tandfonline.com + 59 more

Articles

Top Sydney universities one-third funded by Chinese students

2 days ago | timeshighereducation.com | John Ross

Chinese students provided Sydney’s biggest universities with almost one-third of their revenue last year, in a sign that the federal government’s international education crackdown has not eased the sector’s reliance on Australia’s combative near neighbour. A report from the New South Wales (NSW) auditor general says Chinese enrolments accounted for 78 per cent of international education revenue at the University of Sydney in 2024, and 77 per cent at UNSW Sydney.
AI tool uses enrolment information to pinpoint student disengagement

4 days ago | timeshighereducation.com | John Ross

Academics are squandering the potential of artificial intelligence to help with learning analytics, according to the architect of a programme that can determine at-risk students from the information they provide when they enrol. A test of the AI model, developed at the Australian Catholic University (ACU), found it succeeded up to 17 times out of 20 in flagging international postgraduates at risk of disengaging from their studies.
Academic jobs on the line in Macquarie restructure

5 days ago | timeshighereducation.com | John Ross

Sydney’s Macquarie University plans to remove the equivalent of up to 60 full-time academic positions as part of a “workforce realignment” designed to match activities to “contemporary needs”. The academic union says the “brutal restructure” will “drastically cut options for students”, with humanities and social sciences offerings “sacrilegiously burned”.
Student Gaza protest restrictions upheld as Australian universities put ‘safety’ first

6 days ago | timeshighereducation.com | John Ross

Australia’s oldest university has doubled down on policies that restrict protests and other forms of student activism, as administrators strive to balance rights to free expression with safety. The University of Sydney has pressed ahead with five “key policies” drafted on the recommendation of eminent barrister Bruce Hodgkinson, following a review sparked by pro-Palestinian encampments in 2024.
Short Circuit: An inexhaustive weekly compendium of rulings from the federal courts of appeal

1 week ago | reason.com | John Ross

Politics Book burning, hit pieces, and marijuana's historical pedigree. | Please enjoy the latest edition of Short Circuit, a weekly feature written by a bunch of people at the Institute for Justice.
New Zealand’s coalition divided over cost of new medical school

1 week ago | timeshighereducation.com | John Ross

A rift in New Zealand’s governing coalition may stymie plans to open the country’s third medical school, with prime minister Christopher Luxon and incoming deputy prime minister David Seymour at loggerheads over the issue. Seymour, head of the coalition’s junior Association of Consumers and Taxpayers (Act) Party, reportedly told business leaders that he opposed the new medical school because he did not want the country to go “broke”.
International income drives surpluses up at Sydney universities

1 week ago | timeshighereducation.com | John Ross

Solid investment returns, generous philanthropy and surging income from international students have produced an A$880 million turnaround in the financial standing of the public universities in Australia’s most populous state. But the good fortune has been monopolised by the two richest institutions, with six of the remaining eight recording deficits and a seventh managing only a razor-thin surplus.
Now I get how our foreign students feel, says US-bound Australian

1 week ago | timeshighereducation.com | John Ross

The attempt to ban international enrolments at Harvard University is reminiscent of Canberra’s treatment of overseas students, with both groups at the mercy of erratic policy and the “broad discretionary power” of immigration officials, according to an Australian ensnared in the ongoing battle.
‘Time to be imaginative’, says new Universities Australia chair

1 week ago | timeshighereducation.com | John Ross

Canberra’s migration policy poses an existential threat to industry as well as universities, and the two can only secure their futures by working together, new Universities Australia (UA) chair Carolyn Evans has warned. Evans, who has led Queensland’s Griffith University for the past six years, said the federal government’s “very abrupt change” to international education policy settings had stripped vital funding from universities.
Using fees to cross-subsidise research ‘a huge strategic risk’

1 week ago | timeshighereducation.com | John Ross

The “poison” of cross subsidies and “15 years of bipartisan disinvestment” have produced a “broken” research funding system in Australia, a Canberra forum has heard. UNSW Sydney economist Richard Holden said Australia had taken a “huge strategic risk” by allowing itself to become “addicted” to funding research through international tuition fees at “a time of global uncertainty and upheaval”.